


Beggars and Choosers

by tekhnicolor



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Post-Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 11:36:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3727375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tekhnicolor/pseuds/tekhnicolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after the void and the wall and <i>"quite right too,"</i> the Doctor thinks he's discovered a way to bring Rose back to his universe, but not without trading something of his own for the help of an old enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Exchange for Time

**Author's Note:**

> Currently un-beta'ed, though it hopefully will be at some point. Heh. But for now, all mistakes are entirely my own.
> 
> Again, I'd like to reiterate the tagged WARNING that this fic does include references to self-harm, and there will be some scenes of a darker nature. Just so you know!
> 
> Thank you for reading, if you do. :)

**Prologue: In Exchange for Time**

_He was alive, and he found me._

_Just a shadow at the edge of my consciousness, but I saw him, saw his ship, slowly circling mine in the dark space between the stars._

_"You are looking for her," he told me, knowing without asking. "I can help bring her back."_

_I wanted to ask him why he had lived and what he had done to survive, but I couldn't. Not then. You were always first._

_"How?"_

_"The two of us, you and I, the last two Lords of Time. Do you really think we couldn't be clever enough to figure it out?"_

"How?" 

_"Patience," he laughed. "I could hold the template in place. For you. To bring her back."_

_"Why?"_

_I still remember the way his eyes glistened in the dark. His teeth, when he spoke, gleamed white like the varnished columns of Old Atrazus._

_"Because we were friends once. Brothers. Because I know how it feels. To lose the_ paz gallifreya. _And also ..." Here his eyes seemed to flood with an inky black. "Because I need something from you."_

_I asked him what._

"Time."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Chapter I: Home**

Rose's palms were sweaty even against the cold leather of the steering wheel. The windows of her silver Chevy had been left down, the eerie whistles and murmurings of the wind strangely calming in comparison to her heart's erratic beat. One heart. One heart trying to hold enough love for a man with two. One heart, one life. That was it.

She turned the wheel abruptly and the truck veered onto the beach. Despite the memories, it seemed easier to drive off-road over the hilly sand than deal with crowded streets and stop lights and the rushing noise of a thousand other cars with a thousand other destinations in mind, none involving a blue box or a shadowed man or a sunset ten years past. The early evening sky was pale grey, patched with dreary shades of pink, the still film of the ocean stretching for miles and miles on her right. She had been on the road for days now, driving without much sleep, unable to think of anything other than the message she had received from the Doctor. A vague voice that had stood out like a shout in her noisy head only because of its tenderness. He'd found a way back, and he was coming, and there was always room on board the TARDIS for her, if she wanted. It meant giving up her home here, and the life she had built, but if she was honest, this universe had only ever been a guest house and this life a makeshift one, a desperate attempt to get back to him like she had always promised she would. Her latest attempt had been a dimension canon, which she and some of her Torchwood coworkers had almost been able to perfect. Almost. Now that she was leaving – hopefully, blessedly leaving – there was no need to finish the project.

She felt tears pooling at the corners of her eyes and blinked them away rapidly, telling herself that the stinging in her eyes came only from the wind and that the taste of salt on her lips came from the ocean. But somewhere in the back of her mind she knew better. He had never told her what she wanted so badly to hear, and she had spent the last ten years of her life unable to forget that moment when the words had been stolen from him. If he had been going to say them at all. That was what scared her the most after all this time, that he didn't love her, not the way she wanted him to love her, not the way she loved him. When they had traveled together – the memory of their various adventures bringing with it a fresh batch of tears – there had been moments when she'd seen it in his eyes, that twinkle of someone who had never been happier than they were just then, and also that dusky, aching look of someone who wanted more. But he was alien, and so she hadn't been _sure._ And she had to be sure, with him. 

And now, there was this. Him calling out to her. Saying he'd found a way to her. That she could come back. That he _wanted_ her to come back. It was every dream she'd ever had in Pete's World come true. She had changed so much, and she thought she had grown so much, but now she felt like a child, like a little girl running home as fast as her wobbly legs could carry her. And if he didn't love her the way she did him, well, she would love him anyway, she decided. As if she had a choice. He would always be home to her, and she would always hold his hand if he'd let her.

If only they hadn't lost so much _time._

She slowed her truck as the landscape began to grow recognizable, the familiar rock formations and the well-known curve of the shoreline appearing just on the horizon. All of her nightmares involved this location, this location and a day and a setting sun and a man who was there one minute and gone the next. A sentence left unsaid. So many things left unsaid. She had been chasing those three words for the longest time now, trying to get to them, and just a few days ago she had waved goodbye to her mum and to Pete and to Mickey and to her own brother, little Tony, in hopes of finding them at last. The thought occurred to her that it might be selfish leaving her family and new brother behind, and maybe it was. Maybe it was selfish and maybe it was wrong, and maybe one day she would even be sorry for it, but there was nothing her mind could tell her heart to keep it from running after the Doctor. She was past the point of being guilt-tripped, even by herself. Her family had each other, and she finally had something worth running for. And damn it if she wasn't going to run after it.

When the truck rolled to a stop, the wind still whipping her hair about her head and the ocean waves crashing lazily against the shore, she peeled her shaky hands from the wheel and turned off the vehicle. She hadn't really thought about what to do with it when he showed up – _if_ he showed up. She prayed he would, but for a Time Lord the bloke had a brilliantly poor sense of timing. 

The beach around her was cold and empty. Still sitting in the driver's seat, she almost turned the car back on for its heater, but eventually resorted to simply hugging herself in her blue jacket. Why had she worn this jacket and not something nicer? She realized dully that her clothes were entirely ordinary: blue jeans, the blue jacket, a pink long-sleeved undershirt, and boots. Her knickers too, and bra, she realized, we're both simple and plainly black-colored. Not that it was important. Not that she wasn't _hoping_ it would be important. It had been so many years since she'd had any reason to dress nicely that she had stopped caring much what her wardrobe looked like. Yes, there had been Torchwood parties and less formal parties, and she had attended some of them, but she usually left early after growing bored with the casual conversation. She'd attained quite the reputation as the clever, interesting-to-talk-to-but-mysteriously-private woman whose work took up most of her life. She supposed the Doctor might appreciate that. It wasn't really work she enjoyed though, and it wasn't really that she disliked parties or company either. It was just that she wanted _stars._ She wanted stars and the sky and the familiar strangeness of stepping onto a new planet and she wanted a hand to hold. A very specific hand actually. She hadn't just woken up one morning with a craving. 

She _had_ had cravings however, ones left achingly unanswered. Being that she was so faithful. To someone who neither had any obligation nor had promised to be faithful to her in return. To someone who didn't even know she was being faithful to him. Yeah. Bloody lovely, that. Rose sighed and pulled the zipper of her jacket up a little higher to keep out the cold. This was the time the Doctor had said he'd be here. There was still no sign of him; however, she figured she ought to at least give him an hour's buffer. Or a day's. A week's? God, she would wait all year on this beach for that man if she had to. Sometimes she hated that. Sometimes she hated how much she was willing to do for him. It didn't change the fact that she was willing to do the things. But still.

After a few more minutes of silence, she rolled the windows up and huddled down in her seat, leaning it back just slightly. He was coming. He was. He was coming and it wasn't a dream because it just couldn't be, she wouldn't let it, and she hadn't slept in days and if she could just catch a wink right now, she was sure he'd be there when she woke up. She was sure. Absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent sure. The ocean hummed in the background like a soothing song, and eventually the sky's shades of grey faded to black.

* * *

Rose woke to the white noise of waves against the shore and the whirring, whooshing sound of the TARDIS materializing. She sat up sleepily, rubbing her eyes and wondering how long it had been since she’d dozed off. The Doctor was here, finally, and – _wait._

_The Doctor was here._

Every muscle in her body froze, her breath caught, her heart stopped beating and simply hung like a stone in her ribcage. He was here. After all this time, he was here.

Swallowing hard and gathering her courage with an unsteady breath, she turned her head towards the sound, towards the image of the blue box that was now fading in and out where it stood just a few hundred feet from her truck. She gripped the door handle, her knuckles white, and pushed the door open. The sand beneath her feet felt like jello when she hopped from the vehicle, tucking hair behind her ears to clear her vision. The wind had died down by now, the sky had darkened into a deeper shade of grey, and the sun was setting on the horizon, a pale disk sinking into the sea like a cookie dipped in milk. Before her the TARDIS had finally stopped its waxing and waning, standing still like a tiny blue castle, its wood a bit more chipped than she remembered but still so very bright, and the light on its roof gleaming alongside the early stars.

By the time she realized she had been moving, she had walked half the distance to the box. She stopped, unsure how to go on. She hadn’t brought any personal things with her, no bags, no carry-on. It was just her standing there in the sand on the beach, waiting. She felt empty-handed all of a sudden. Small. Alone. The doors didn’t open.

She waited. And still, nothing. Her stomach fluttered. In the wind she was shaking like a reed.

And then there was a creaking sound, so slow and quiet she nearly missed it. A faint bar of yellow light appearing across the ground where the door had been opened, the sand beneath it glittering with fool’s gold.

The bar widened, and a silhouette stepped out of the box, its arm up to shield its face from the last traces of sunlight. Light spilled around it from inside the TARDIS, through where the door still stood open, washing the ground about its feet in waves of gold and a thousand tiny terrestrial stars. Rose felt everything around her dissolve, the sky and the earth and the sea and even the TARDIS all melting into thousands of sand-like particles, whirling away on the wind and tumbling out from under her feet until it was only her and the silhouette left standing in an endless, colorless space.

It stepped forward.

The fluttering in her stomach stopped. It was him. The same him, in the same coat, brown, pinstriped suit and cream-colored trainers he had always worn. She hadn’t realized until now how worried she had been that it wouldn’t be this him. Any him would be wonderful, of course, but _this_ him … it was a special him.

She still stood about ten paces away, while he hovered just outside the TARDIS, entirely still save for his hands flexing at his sides and the rapid blinking of his eyes. Even from this distance, he seemed a bit older, his eyes as ancient as ever but tinged with a touch more sadness, his hair – though still really great – no longer flopping over his eyes the way it once had, and his shoulders slightly broader. He seemed thinner somehow however, if that were possible. His cheekbones stood out slightly more, making his face appear more gaunt than usual, and the coat – despite fitting well over his wide shoulders – engulfed him in a way it once hadn’t. She took a hesitant step towards him.

“Rose …” The hoarse sound of her name on the wind sent an intoxicating chill racing through her body. She blinked back tears, opening her mouth to say something in return and then covering it with a hand when no words came. That was her name. The way it was supposed to be said. The proper way. By him. That was … it was _him._ It was him and God, _God_ she couldn’t find enough breath to fill her lungs. 

Once again, under the same sun, on the same _fucking_ beach, she didn’t know what to say.

And then somehow he was there, the scratchy cotton of his coat under her fingertips and his arms tight around her, his breath warm against her neck and her cheek pressed against his chest. He was there, smelling of mint and tea and cool mountain pine and _time,_ tangling a hand in her hair and burying his face in the crook of her neck and shoulder. He was there holding her, warm and familiar and achingly close, his hearts beating against her chest just as frantically as she knew her own was. He was there with her, and she found her arms wrapped around his neck, holding his head to her, keeping her with him. He was there and he was everything, all at once, simultaneously the moon and the stars and the air and the depths of the sea, violent and vibrant and so, _so_ alive. He was there and she was standing, exchanging heartbeats with him in the eye of the storm – in the middle of everything they’d been through – and it was beautiful. _He_ was beautiful.

His body shook against her own and she realized he was crying, his sobs muffled against her shoulder. Her own tears came slowly, slipping down her cheeks and into his hair as she pressed her lips to his head.

“Hey,” she whispered against it. “I’ve got you. I’m here, look. I’ve got you.”

She heard her name again, like a confession, against her shoulder, and then felt cold lips on the skin of her neck, kissing her there once, and then once more before stilling, his breath making her skin tingle.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice miniscule.

“Shh, don’t.” She stopped him before he had a chance to repeat the sentiment, his hair sticky with gel and saltwater against her eyelids when she blinked. “Please don’t.” They had been separated, no fault of his, and she didn’t want his guilt or apologies. She wanted him to hold her, just as he was doing now, to hold her like she was made of fragile glass even when he knew she was made of materials much more substantial. She choked on a sob when his lips found her neck again, and he pulled back, eyes red and rimmed with tears, arms still fastened around her waist as if he were afraid to let her go.

“I love you.”

The words came from him so hurriedly she wasn’t sure she had heard properly. Her hands were at the lapels of his coat now, holding on, just to be connected to him.

“What?”

“I love you,” he repeated, and then laughed, standing up straight and drawing one hand from around her waist to wipe his eyes with its back. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and smiled, seeming entirely like himself again other than the redness around his eyes. “I love you. I do. Been practicing, me.”

She felt her hands tighten on his lapels, but couldn’t bring herself to let go. “What?” Her voice faltered.

With the hand he had used to wipe his eyes, he gently removed her left hand from his lapel and brought it down to her side before twining his fingers through hers. The contented sigh that ran through him then seemed to travel like electricity on a current straight to her, her body shivering with pleasure at the sensation, as well as at the long missed contact. The world righted itself when he held her hand.

“I’ve been practicing,” he told her, shyly, letting go of her waist completely to scratch his neck in his usual sheepish way with the hand that was not holding hers. “Saying it. Rose Tyler …” She watched the way his tongue flicked the top of his mouth as he said the last syllable, the way his eyes glittered under the dimly lit sky, felt his thumb brush against the back of her hand for the first time in so long, listened to the deep breath he took before his next words. “I love you.” 

The tears came then, really came, and his face grew blurry in front of her before he was pulling her to him again by the hand. They spent a long moment wiping tears from each other’s eyes, exchanging small laughs and choking on quiet sobs, content in silence and the closeness of the other. Finally, he pulled her the rest of the way to him, pressing her body to his own and resting his chin on her head with a satisfied exhale. 

“Really,” he insisted quietly. “I do. I really do. And it’s easier to say now. ‘Rose Tyler, I love you.’” She felt his teeth click together as he finished practicing the words and closed his mouth. He held her there then, for a long moment. The salty night air whispered around them, the echoes of crashing waves reached them from somewhere in the distance, and in his arms she took steadying breaths, focusing on the slow movement of his hands across her back. She could have rested there against his chest forever, in the soft coming of twilight, listening to his breath around those three words over and over until sleep descended, if he hadn’t spoken then.

“Please say something, Rose. Please.” His voice was so small that he could almost have been talking to herself.

She recognized suddenly that she hadn’t said a thing other than ‘what’ since he’d told her he loved her, though with good reason. She had waited for those words for ten years, and she hadn’t expected them to come this easy. Did he mean them the way she had meant them, the way she still meant them? Did he know what she’d meant when she’d said them all those years ago, when they last stood in this exact place, saying goodbye instead of hello?

She pulled back a little and met his eyes and yes, yes he had to mean them. She had never seen him so earnest before. Eyes still red and cheeks still stained with tears, hair drooping a little sadly, the look he was giving her one she knew very well. She had seen it in her own eyes ever since the day she had met him.

She found his hand again and took it in her own.

“Let’s go home.”

The Doctor’s eyes went wide, and it occurred to her then that he had come here expecting she might not want to return with him. The thought broke her heart in a thousand ways.

“Right, yes, right!” he was saying. “We should go. Don’t have much time, actually. Forgot about that bit. Spatial-temporal strum, if you will. Got a bit of help. But yeah, we should go.” He didn’t move however, only stood and watched her, their hands still joined and a slow grin spreading across his face. “Rose Tyler,” he said, in that absolutely delighted way of his where he over-enunciated each syllable and tilted his head a bit, his grin turning smug. “I _love_ you.” 

After nearly a full minute of watching him amusedly and trying to keep from blushing under his boyish gaze – someone really ought to have taught him how rude it was to stare – she rolled her eyes and pushed past him, muttering something about the cold and how he shouldn’t keep a lady standing out in it without even offering his coat, and pulled him behind her into the TARDIS, his amused chuckle doing something funny to her insides.

She left the truck abandoned on the beach.

This was home, and it had found her, and there was so much time to make up for.


	2. Because It Hurts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a bit slow still, doesn't go off in too many directions, but I felt there needed to be something in-between the Doctor and Rose meeting each other on the beach and the rest of the story. It's also kind of a long chapter. Because, you know, it's an important moment. Also kissing. 
> 
> I promise you'll find out the details of the Doctor and Master's trade-off in the next chapter. :) 
> 
> Also WARNING: This is the chapter that mentions self harm. I haven't worked out yet whether any future ones will, but just a heads up.

**Chapter II: Because It Hurts**

Rose felt the Doctor freeze for a moment as they stepped into the TARDIS.

“Did you feel …” he began to ask, and then trailed off at the little ‘aw’ sound she made upon seeing the console again. “Is it, is it how you remember?” he asked, the shyness in his voice tugging at her heartstrings.

She took in the entirety of the room with a sweeping gaze. The console, buzzing with levers and switches and various other gadgets she was sure probably belonged in a kitchen or a child’s playroom. The bright round things – come to think of it, what _were_ they? – running up and down the walls, adding to the familiar warmth that always flooded this room. The captain’s chair, the grating, the tall column stretching from the center of the console to the ceiling, its blue glow humming but motionless. For a moment she could see the two of them, dancing around the console in a happy haze, babbling back and forth as the Doctor tinkered below the grating, wriggling in the captain’s seat until they were both comfortable, her legs across his lap and his arm around her shoulder. But the images faded, the brightness of the room darkening only a little without their presence. The real thing was right behind her though, she realized, and turned.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yes. Exactly.”

He grinned so broadly it lit up his face, and then danced around her, hands stuffed in his pockets, the TARDIS door clicking closed softly behind him. She spun around, following him with her eyes as he skipped to the console, flipping a switch here and a lever there, pulling at one thing-a-ma-bob and pushing at another until the gentle whooshing noise sent the ship into the time vortex. She remembered it all like it was yesterday, and it could have been, except the weariness behind his eyes told her it wasn’t. She joined him at the console, running her hands across it and caressing its odds and ends almost tenderly.

“Missed you,” she said softly.

“Oh?”

When she looked up, he was tugging at his earlobe on the opposite side of the console. She looked at him slightly confused, and his face turned pink. 

“Ohhhh. Oh, you meant … you meant _her_. The TARDIS. You missed the TARDIS. Yes, well,” he cleared his throat and began to mess with the console’s gadgets, a gesture she knew was just him needing to keep his hands busy when he felt uncomfortable. “She’s nice to have around.”

“So are you,” Rose said, without really meaning to.

“Nice?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence before he walked around the console, and she had to turn her head away and stifle a giggle at how awful he was at pretending to appear casual. By the time he’d reached her, she’d managed to wipe most of the grin from her face, turning to him with only a small half-smile. It had been quiet between them for a few minutes now, which should have been strange, because he was always filling this room with incessant babble on one topic or another, only it wasn’t. Instead it was an easy quiet, one that she could have drifted in forever, if his hand at her wrist hadn’t suddenly sent an unexpected warmth threading through her body. 

He was saying something, toying with the fingers of her hand as he held it between them, but her mind had wandered elsewhere. She had no idea what to do now that she was back, didn’t think the regular nice-to-see-you-again-how-have-you-been conversations would really suffice in their case, wasn’t sure what he expected to happen between them now. She only knew that standing here, with less than a foot between them, was like leaning out over the top of the world’s tallest building, waiting – _wanting_ – to fall.

“ … stars so far apart,” he was saying. “Or no, not stars, maybe planets. Planets are good. Planets are brilliant. Don’t you think?”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but she nodded her head anyway. “Yeah … brilliant, I s’pose.”

“Yup,” he said, popping the ‘p,’ and then his expression grew frustrated. His eyes fell closed and his head tilted back. She could have kissed him then, kissed the long pale column of his neck and worked her way to his mouth, just tongue and teeth and the taste of salt on her lips. She could have, but she didn’t. “Rose, I can’t do this.”

Her world froze. “Sorry?”

His head came back to its upright position, and his eyes – darker now than they had been before – scanned hers, flicking from one to the next, a look of complete confusion on his face. They went wide when realization set in.

“Oh! Oh, no, sorry no.” He held both her hands in his and squeezed tightly. “It’s not being with you that I can’t do. Erm, and when I say ‘being with you’ I mean, well, just that really, being with you. Unless, you know, being _with_ you – there’s that too. That’s a, uh, another thing.” He didn’t meet her eyes, and instead chose that moment to remove his coat and lay it on the console, his hands finding hers once more and his chest rising with what looked like a preparatory sigh. “But right, I was saying … I was saying,” – he swallowed – “It’s not being with you that I can’t do. It’s, it’s the opposite.”

It was endearing, the way he stumbled over his words, rambling until he reached someplace near the point he was trying to make and _what_ … what had he just said? She had thought this might happen, that he might want this, but she had also been terrified, terrified that they had changed too much or that things would go back to exactly the way they had been before they lost each other, teasing and flirting and ignoring the rest. She wanted to be _with_ him, if she could. If he wanted it. She thought he might, and that thought gave her courage. 

She lightly tugged one of her hands from his, and with a movement so slow so as not to scare him off, brought it to his cheek, resting her palm against the light overlay of stubble. He didn’t move away, but his eyes lifted to hers in question and she had to look elsewhere, focusing on where her hand met his skin. His cheek was cool beneath the light touch of her fingertips, his skin soft and golden under the TARDIS lights. It was enough, this, just the closeness. She thought of that day on the beach, of how she’d reached out to touch him and he hadn’t really been there. The memory made her breath stop and her hand falter. She pulled it away. And he caught it.

“Rose.”

“Yeah.” She still couldn’t meet his eyes, focusing instead on the tuft of hair above his forehead. He noticed. Of course he did. 

“Rose, I understand that my hair is very interesting, and really very great, if you ask me – well, if you ask anyone. Well, _almost_ anyone. There was this one prisoner I shared a cell with once on Travadastine who was offended by …” He cleared his throat. “In any case, I entirely support the idea of staring at it, even touching it and, well, things, but not right now. Right now I just …” He paused, seeming to find something intensely fascinating in her eyes, and then did that thing again where he tilted his head back and then, and then he _groaned._ Actually, literally groaned. His fingers around her wrist tightened.

She said nothing. She wanted to say everything to him, but she said nothing.

His head rose again and he met her eyes. He shook his head, brown hair flopping over his forehead, and shrugged, looking as though he’d just given up on something. “Sorry, yeah, sorry, I just can’t.”

And then his hands were on her, an acute pain flaring where his fingers dug into her hips. The question she meant to ask got caught in her throat as soon as his lips touched hers. But it was not a touch. It was a deep pressure, desperate and insistent and sloppy. And it was an answer. He had said the words, yes, and that was the important bit; but this was an answer to the rest of the questions.

She made a noise against his mouth, a half laugh, half sob, and he stopped his kiss only long enough to smile at her a little and dip back down, pressing his lips to hers and letting his tongue slip between them, one of his hands rising to push into her hair, holding her tightly against him. She wound her arms around his neck and tugged at his hair, hard, the little squeak he made making the action entirely worth it. He turned her then, his movements slightly rougher than she remembered, a bit less calculated, a bit more frantic, and she felt him pulling her with him as he walked backwards, stopping only when the backs of his knees bumped into something. Her eyes blinked open and she saw the captain’s seat, only seconds before he fell back into it. There was an awkward moment, where she was half standing, half leaning over him, and he lounged against the seat, hands reaching to her waist.

“Mmm, this isn’t quite right,” he grinned, his eyes sparkling with plans she could only imagine. And probably had. Often. “Here.” He grunted a little, sitting up and pulling her onto his lap before scooting back again, leaving her straddling his waist, hands resting against his chest for support. “I like this better,” he mused, wobbling his head back and forth with a cheeky smile. Too cheeky. She kissed it right off his face.

They had sat on this chair before, limbs wrapped around each other, lights low, exchanging stories and cuddles and nuzzling noses between laughs, but it had never gone much further than that. This was new, strange, beautiful. She closed her eyes and saw the truck and the beach and could hardly stand it, bending to lay across him and lean her face into his shoulder.

“You alright?” His concern was so innocent. She loved him for that. She loved him for a lot of things, really.

“Yeah. It’s just …” She pressed her nose against his neck and breathed in, inhaling all the same fragrances she used to whenever he’d hugged her. “You’re here. It’s real. Really, really real.”

“Oh yes.” He turned to kiss her again, placing a brief one at her lips before putting that avid tongue of his to use and licking down her neck, his hands coming up to bunch her hair into a loose ponytail behind her head. The sighs he let out against her skin left her shivering against him, her fingers digging into his shoulders and her blood pounding. Teeth replaced tongue and suddenly she couldn’t help it, couldn’t keep herself from helping him shrug out of his jacket, from pulling the knot of his tie loose, from fumbling tactlessly with the buttons of his shirt until it parted. He wasn’t wearing another layer today, and she kissed his chest, the space right between his hearts, feeling his duel heartbeats beneath her hands. She scraped her nails down his chest, only lightly, and saw the way his eyelids fluttered and his head fell back when she moved against him; and then he was kissing her, again and again, his hands slipping underneath her shirt, fingertips skittering over her rib cage and _oh_ – he might be alien, but that part of him was decidedly human-esque. He held her tighter, just there, keeping her to him, asking her without words not to move or to leave but to stay. And she would, always. Forever, she had said. And meant it with every breath in her body.

He grew more desperate then. His hands searching ceaselessly for warm skin, pushing fabric out of the way until her jacket was off and her shirt halfway up her body. He placed a trail of open-mouthed kisses from just below her ear to her jaw, and then found her neck again, licking and biting and then licking again, her hands tangled in his hair and his hips rocking even the smallest bit making her pulse run wild. When he took a moment to breathe, she heard a whine escape her lips and couldn’t stop herself from rocking against him in return. 

He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat that she vowed she would hear every day for the rest of her life. “God, Rose …”

When she rocked again, solely to be a tease, he rolled his head back and forth against the back of the seat and let out a low moan. His eyes screwed shut, and he held her still on top of him, his hands at her hips even tighter than they had been before. He loosened his grip only when she began undoing the buttons on one of his sleeves. His hands loose, the rest of his body froze, his chest rising and falling at a frighteningly slow pace. His eyes met hers, and he looked … _scared,_ she thought. 

“We don’t have to …” she began, but he shook his head.

“No, no, it’s just …” he swallowed, thumbs tracing circles at her hips distractedly. His brown eyes were wider than usual, and she could see his jaw tightening repeatedly, the creases on his forehead and around his eyes more pronounced. His eyes always looked old, but now they looked tired, exhausted. She thought of the things he might have been through since she last saw him, and hated herself for not having been there with him. He gave her his hand. “It’s just …” He tried the sentence one more time but couldn’t quite finish. Typical. She unbuttoned the small button and slipped his right arm all the way out of the sleeve.

She stopped. Everything inside of her stopped.

No.

No, no, no, no, _no._ She choked on tears she didn't want to come, but which came anyway. Not bittersweet tears, not this time. This time they were from perfect sadness, perfect, aching, horrible sadness that ripped her open like a sudden bullet. She held his slender wrist delicately in her hand and turned it over, palm up, her movement shaky and slow and paused by only a brief moment of weak restraint from him, abandoned almost as soon as it began. She blinked away tears.

Beginning beneath her trembling fingertips, and stretching to the inside of his elbow, covering nearly the entirety of his forearm, were hundreds of thin silver scars striating his skin, criss-crossing over the long blue vein that ran under them like bridges over a river. They were old, but they were there — needle-fine hashes between freckles and light skin. She looked to him and he wouldn't look at her, face turned away, back stiff against the captain's chair. She couldn't make out the expression on his face, but his adam's apple bobbed up and down more than once and she wondered if he, too, was swallowing back tears. And it was _agony_ not knowing what to say, wanting to shake him and hold him and breathe life into him. It was agony carrying that frustrating, universal, _god-awful_ feeling that makes your heart swell and your body ache when the one you love is in pain and everything you want to give them is inside you but you don't know how to get it out. He was so perfect, so beautiful, so otherworldly, sitting there under the soft gold lights like a strange, quiet creature. It was so easy to love him. It was so hard to make him understand. 

Images came of this same quiet creature, alone, broken, in the dark, _without her,_ without anyone else to hold onto, and she flung them from her mind all at once as though they burned. She loved him. She loved him so much it hurt. And even in the middle of all his alien-ness, these marks, these scars, they were so ... _human._

She brought his wrist to her lips and kissed it. His hand at her hip tightened. He turned and looked at her, big brown eyes and wild brown hair and a smattering of freckles over fair skin, and he was crying. 

Before today, she had only seen this kind of sadness in the mirror. She had never known exactly what it meant until now. 

_This is what a broken heart looks like._

She slid the loose shirt the rest of the way off his body, unbuttoning the second sleeve to reveal another, not unexpected set of scars. She let the garment fall to the ground, pooling at the base of the chair, and lowered his first arm, carefully drawing the second one to her lips and pressing a gentle kiss to blue-purple veins at his wrist. He moved then, turning his hand and pushing it back into her hair, unable again to meet her eyes. 

"Hey," she made her voice, hoarse as it was, sound as comforting as she could. One of her hands rested against his nearly upright chest, the other still held his wrist between them on their shared lap space. She moved the one on his chest to his forehead to brush tendrils of hair from his face. "You're so pretty."

He laughed then, dropping his head forward until his forehead rested against her breastbone, his shoulders shaking. Just a small thing, but she hoped it made him feel better.

"What?" She feigned confusion, pretended not to understand his reason for laughing, pretended it was perfectly usual for her to go around calling him 'pretty.' It should be, really, and she'd see to that. Because he was. He was bloody beautiful and it was about time he realized it, _really_ realized it. Not just with pretend narcissism and a repressed case of low self-esteem as wide as the Pacific Ocean. She held his head, hands pushing back hair delicately, and tried to tilt her head to the side to see his face. "What are you going on about? What's so funny? You better tell me so I can use it again."

She felt his lips brush against chest just once, and then he was sitting up again, wiping his face with the back of his hand and meeting her eyes. Finally. 

She scooted closer to him, kissed the corner of his mouth. She had to ask. 

"Did you ... did you stop?"

"Yes. Met a friend. Helped a bit. Still hurts though."

"Oh," and then, "tell me."

"What?"

She dragged fingertips across his arm until she found his hand and held it. He shivered at her touch. 

"Tell me." 

He leaned in then and kissed her mouth, and she tasted the salt of tears on his lips, wet and cool against her own. When he stopped, he rested his forehead against hers and kept his eyes closed. She whispered the command again.

"After the beach, you know," he cleared his throat, "the last time." His voice was hushed and controlled, and he was looking down at their hands in his lap, watching as his fingers toyed nervously with hers. "I met that friend I was telling you about. Just a friend, not, well, you know …. Sometimes I’m not sure she even likes me. And she’s ginger, how rubbish is that?"

Rose giggled. "Jealous?

"Nah," he said, and then sniffed, feigning airs. "Wasn't the _proper_ shade of red anyway."

"Oi!" she nudged him a little. "Beggars can't be choosers, ya know." 

He made a disapproving sound and went on, the seriousness returning to his face. "Anyway, I met her and then she left, well, and then she came back later but that was after ... after ..." 

She squeezed his hand, letting him know it was okay to go on.

"After I was on my own for a while," he said, releasing a long-held breath.

Realizing belatedly that the earlier mood, the one they had been in when they first collapsed into this chair, was over, Rose moved one leg carefully over the Doctor's, sitting on the chair between him and the armrest, her legs over his horizontally. She kept his hand in hers, and he shifted closer to her, still playing with her fingers where they now rested on her thighs.

When he spoke again, his voice was unsteady. 

"I've lost lots of people. Billions, really. But others too. Good friends, not from my planet. People I knew, traveled with. Saying goodbye is sort of, um, in my job description as you would put it." He looked at her, wearing the expression of a little boy who wasn't allowed to play on the playground after being told he could, all confused and hurt and not understanding. "It wasn't this hard, Rose. It was _never_ this hard. And nobody told me. Nobody said anything about this, about love and, and goodbyes." He looked wounded. "We don't learn it on Gallifrey, and yeah, I knew goodbyes hurt, I've always known that, quite good in that subject, me, but nobody told me how it felt to say goodbye — to _lose_ — someone you ... I love you, Rose."

He was talking about heartbreak, she realized. No one had told him about heartbreak.

Her heart shattered into a thousand pieces and she curled into him, resting her head on the space between his chest and shoulder, trying to get as close to him as possible. His arm came around her, bringing her nearer, and they sat like that in silence for a moment, him still holding her hand on her lap and the TARDIS humming around them like a steady lullaby.

"Why didn't they tell me?" he asked after a moment, and he still sounded hurt and genuinely bewildered. "I was alone, in the TARDIS, in the vortex for so long, angry at them — at the universe — for not telling me how it would feel. Because it hurt."

She remembered a conversation from long, long ago.

_Why no emotions?_

_Because it hurts._

He had to have remembered too, because he paused a moment before continuing. "It hurt, Rose Tyler, and nobody told me. Nobody told me that losing you would feel like dying. I knew it'd be painful and lonely and, well, frankly quite miserable, being that out of all the companies in the universe yours is the one I enjoy most." He gave her hand a little squeeze before his eyes went far away. "So that I knew. But they never told me that when I opened my TARDIS doors and looked up at the stars, I wouldn't be able to see them anymore. Well, I say see them. I mean _see_ them. They were there but they were just ... dead. I guess you make the stars beautiful, for me." He chuckled a little at that, and then sniffed. "I should write a letter, a brilliant, indignant letter with a good amount of exclamation points and possibly even a few unseemly words my people tried to dispose of ages ago but my memory is fantastic and all and right, yes, the letter. I should send it back to Gallifrey, demand they warn the people there about the potential sadness that accompanies love and goodbyes. Warning signs would do nicely. And I'd really do it too, if the old planet's timeline wasn't locked." 

He mumbled something else under his breath, but she couldn't make it out.

"I know," she said softly.

"Hm?"

"I know how it feels."

He pulled back a moment, and then seemed to change his mind because the next thing she knew her nose was pressed into his chest and his arm was pulling her tightly to him, his lips on her brow.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have had to feel that." 

"Neither should you," she added, beginning to feel the same anger at the universe he had spoken of. He hummed faintly, calming down a bit and resting his chin on her head. His chest was cool and he smelled so like _him._ There wasn't really another word for it, not that she could think of. "I'm sorry it hurt," she said. "I'm sorry it all hurt. An' I'm sorry no one told you. But," she held one of his arms, brushed a thumb over the scars at his wrist, his fingers twitching in response, "we'll be alright." 

There was a moment of silence before he spoke. 

"Oh, I'm alright now. Good as gold and what not. Now that you're here." He paused. "Are you ... are you alright too?"

She smiled. He was lying, but she smiled. "Am now. We'll take care of each other now, yeah?" Then she yawned; it was late, her time, and she was starting to feel the weariness from multiple nights of missed sleep settling in.

"Rose, there's something ..." he began, but she was already leaning into him, into his arms, savoring the warmth of his body against hers, even when his temperature was a good deal lower than her own. He was just as she remembered him, mostly, long-limbed and freckled, still gangly and bony, but lean, and she loved the way his hard planes felt against the curves of her body and the light smattering of hair on his chest felt against her cheek. This was her home, was how she had wanted to fall asleep for the last ten years. Maybe not on the captain's chair, but with him. 

"Later, yeah?" she mumbled.

"Well, I really think it ought to be now." He shifted a little. "It's, it's a bit important."

She patted him on the chest sleepily. "Tomorrow will do just fine." 

He grunted, but she took that as consent and let her thoughts melt into dreams. Things could wait. Even important things. Even talks about forever and the lack thereof, which was likely what he was getting at. Although, knowing him, she figured it might just be something like a banana drought or a universe-wide ban on licking things. Hopefully not all things. She still had plans for the two of them, after all. 

The lights in the console room dimmed, and Rose felt the Doctor settle next to her on the seat. 

There was a ship, a thousand miles away and in another time, filled with light and laughter and the clasped hands of two people who had never had to say goodbye to begin with. 

There was a life, in another universe somewhere that neither of them had ever been to, where the Doctor and Rose Tyler danced under never-ending starlight and nothing went wrong. Not ever.

There was a perfect place, somewhere. Not here. But somewhere. 

And here there was this. Him and her, broken in some places and fragile in others, but so alive and so loved and so _very_ together. They didn't need perfect, just this. The knowledge that they were loved and the presence of each other. It was enough.

She drifted into sleep with a hand wrapped protectively around his arm, over the scars she wished she could take away, and listened to the gradual slowing of his hearts.

Her dreams were all of tomorrow, and what he would have to say in the morning, and a vision of her disappearing as she walked beside him.


End file.
